MaestrOS provides out-of-the-box integration with siloed, distributed and real-time data into a curated data model. It links unmatched data curation capabilities with a CIM-compliant common data model, integrates Utopus Insights’ hyper-local weather forecasting service and supports the company’s product families. It includes state-of-the-art authentication and data security, and features published, public and secured APIs and intuitive visualization to work in harmony with a customer’s existing enterprise systems and to leverage their team’s expertise.

Xplore for Wind/Solar—See how all assets are performing in real-time on a single dashboard.

Xplore is a family of applications that delivers precise situational awareness by providing historical and real-time insights into solar and wind asset performance across an entire asset fleet – no matter the location, size or OEM of the assets. It provides intuitive visualizations that you can configure to suit operational performance metrics with personalized, instant alerts through a patented, innovative performance-modeling capability. Xplore seamlessly scales up to an entire fleet, drills down to a single asset or reviews at any operational level in-between to assess operational performance.

Pulse for Wind/Solar—Determine what’s going to break or fail before it breaks or fails.

Pulse is a one-stop predictive maintenance application suite that enables you to identify, prioritize and preempt critical wind/solar component failure across a customer’s entire enterprise. Pulse goes beyond time- or condition-based maintenance analytics and uses patented algorithms to deliver risk-based insights into remaining component life for over 20 asset classes including inverters, transformers, generators, bearings and other mechanical/electrical equipment. It helps improve asset performance, system reliability and target capital investment to provide the greatest value.

HyperCast for Wind/Solar—Reliable renewable energy delivery in an unreliable climate.

HyperCast is a forecasting tool family that uses unsupervised, advanced machine learning on real-time wind and solar farm measurement data. It delivers a 72-hour advance forecast, updated every 10 minutes, for both available and active power generation with best-in-class MAE (Mean Absolute Error) results. HyperCast enables power quality improvement, congestion reduction and reduced downtime by syncing maintenance work to low-production days with up to a 14-day lead time. HyperCast enables customers to leverage market imbalances, sharpen day-ahead and intra-day bid strategies, and quickly identify and resolve asset production anomalies. These results are driven by hyper-local and energy-specific weather service (Nostradamus), that delivers 10-minute interval weather predictions up to 96 hours in advance at each solar farm location and each wind turbine location and hub height.

Nostradamus—Get a precise weather-wise peek into the future.

This is the hyper-local weather forecasting service. Nostradamus forecasts enable more informed decisions on where to preposition response assets, more accurate information to be shared with customers, communities and other key stakeholders, and ultimately reduce service restoration time. It runs a physics-based dynamic model on an HPCC (High-Performance Computing Cluster) to generate forecasts up to 96 hours in advance, at a 10-minute temporal resolution with an industry-leading level of precision down to 1 km². The tool can be quickly linked to a customer’s GIS-mapped assets, and can be made available as a SaaS within five business days.

When developing a utility-scale solar PV project, accurately projecting the site’s power output is crucial. For its 33 MW Kumenan PV project in Japan, Pacifico Energy experimented with publicly available data before seeking a more precise measurement solution.

After implementing SRA Systems from Renewable NRG Systems (RNRG)—a leading designer and manufacturer of decision support tools for the global renewable energy industry—Pacifico Energy increased the accuracy of power output projections at the Kumenan PV project by up to 14%. The gain allowed the company to secure more competitive financing terms to build the PV plant.

Getting the projection right

As the utility solar industry continues to grow, the need for solar resource assessment to facilitate more accurate power output forecasting is becoming increasingly important. The most critical parameter used to estimate power output is Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI). Because of its direct impact on energy production estimates, miscalculations of GHI can cause critical financial risk for project owners and investors. When Pacifico Energy first set out to determine power output at the Kumenan PV project, they used publicly available, long-term GHI data from New Energy and Industrial Technology Organization (NEDO). Such resources are common in Japan, but are not ideal for every project.

In Pacifico Energy’s case, the weather stations used by NEDO to collect GHI data were located too far from the Kumenan PV project to provide accurate output projections. Instead, they selected an approach that aligns with the solar industry’s GHI measurement best practices, integrating the high-quality irradiance data collected onsite with RNRG’s ground-based SRA Systems with long-term satellite data. According to Nate Franklin, who manages Pacifico Energy’s activities in Japan, ”Deploying finance-grade solar assement campaigns like this one is fairly new in Japan, but Pacifico Energy wants to lead the way towards a high-standard approach to PV project development in the country.”

Pacifico Energy opted for RNRG’s solution because of its exemplary quality, reasonable cost, and its ease of installation and maintenance. The SRA Systems were installed at the Kumenan PV site in 2013 and collected real-time irradiance data for one year. The monitoring station was equipped with best-in-class meteorological sensors that integrated seamlessly with RNRG’s much-lauded SymphoniePLUS3 data logger, providing measured data directly to Pacifico Energy’s control room. The long-term satellite data were later corrected with the records collected by the SRA Systems, providing the most accurate irradiance input to energy production simulation model.

“The SRA System configuration that is used here is recommended for utility-scale resource assessment campaigns and solar monitoring applications when measurement accuracy is the top priority,” said Dave Hurwitt, VP Marketing & Product Management at RNRG. “Pairing RNRG’s solution with satellite data ensures that deviations between predicted irradiance and actual site conditions are minimized, which is extremely beneficial for PV project developers.”

Better data leads to better results

Once the solar assessement campaign reached completion, Pacifico Energy concluded that RNRG’s SRA Systems helped improve the long-term GHI estimation by up to 14% when compared with the irradiance data collected by NEDO weather stations alone. The Kumenan PV plant has been in operation since early 2016 and power output has closely mirrored RNRG’s predictions. The impressive resource assessment accuracy at the Kumenan PV project led Pacifico Energy to install RNRG’s SRA Systems at six other projects in Japan.

“This way, we can ensure that all of our projections reflect reality,” added Franklin.

Renewable NRG Systems (RNRG) measurement products and technical services are purpose-built for the global renewable energy industry. RNRG pioneered wind resource assessment more than 30 years ago, when the wind industry was just beginning. Today, the company serves multiple stages of wind and solar project development—from site assessment to commercial operation.

Data monitoring is an important tool for growing the impact of the solar installs across the country, and message seems to be resonating. Locus Energy, a solar performance monitoring and data analytics platform provider, says it has surpassed 5 GW of solar capacity globally, of which more than 4.8 GW monitored capacity is in the U.S.

Since the beginning of 2016, Locus has added more than 3.0 GW of monitored solar capacity, an increase of 150 percent. This milestone reflects continued record growth in solar, as well as a growing recognition of the important role that Locus’ asset monitoring and analytics services play in achieving long-term investment return.

To put that number in perspective, according to the most recent Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA)’s Solar Industry Data report, at the end of Q3 2016, there were roughly 35.8 GW of total installed solar capacity in the U.S. Locus Energy monitors 13.5 percent of the U.S.’s installed solar capacity across more than 128,600 sites. Locus has added more than 24,000 sites in the past year, an increase of approximately 23.2 percent since January 2016.

“The solar market is changing and maturing very quickly, which means that operating a PV system efficiently is only going to become more critical over time,” said Michael Herzig, CEO of Locus Energy. “Locus’ long-term commitment to the entire lifecycle of PV projects means that we are uniquely positioned to enable our partners to operate and optimize their PV assets for their entire lifespans. As the solar industry continues to grow and mature, we are looking forward to continuing to help shape its adoption of best-in-class asset monitoring and analytics solutions.”

APsystems just launched a new, redesigned version of its Energy Monitoring & Analysis (EMA) website. Let’s check it out.

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What’s new?

The web-based platform, available for free on any connected device, monitors and reports module-level energy production of solar arrays which utilize APsystems inverters and provides that information to homeowners and end users in a convenient and user-friendly format.

The site also enables APsystems-registered solar installers and contractors to lower their maintenance costs by creating and managing their customers’ PV installation accounts remotely.

Key features of the new EMA site include a more attractive design and a more engaging user experience with an enhanced system dashboard, system management tools and improved reporting functions.

The new EMA website is active and available now, the result of a seamless transition from the previous site to the new interface. The added functionality addresses the high demand for detailed data and enhanced capability in a more user-friendly experience for the growing and competitive solar industry.

“The site already hosts tens of thousands of homeowners and end users all over the world who view their APsystems solar array performance online and through the APsystems EMA App,” said Wesley Tong, APsystems chief marketing officer. “These new design improvements now give them an even more in-depth view of their system energy production, improved reporting and additional historical data in a clean, comprehensive and dynamic user interface.”

NEXTracker has acquired BrightBox Technologies, Inc., a predictive modeling software and machine-learning technologies company. This acquisition will broaden NEXTracker’s capability for advanced diagnostics and real-time control of solar tracking systems. The added capability will deliver accelerated commissioning time and increased energy yield of NEXTracker systems globally.

“This acquisition amplifies NEXTracker’s software engineering resources, including the addition of cofounders Allan Daly and Dr. Francesco Borrelli, a renowned expert in modeling and predictive control software systems,” said NEXTracker CEO Dan Shugar. “The team has a rich history in the optimization of complex energy efficiency systems, advanced control of autonomous vehicles, and development of other pioneering feedback-based software.”

This platform builds on NEXTracker’s existing wireless monitoring infrastructure that is being used to monitor the real-time angle and motor current of each and every tracker row the company has deployed since 2013. With the enhanced capabilities, NEXTracker will be able to: